In 2019, environmentalist Angus Robson spearheaded a campaign against intensive winter grazing.
It involved footage of muddy mess flowing into waterways from bare farmland, stripped of crops by hungry cattle. Livestock were pictured mired in mud.
“I don’t know how anybody could see that and just turn a blind eye,” Robson, of Matamata, told RNZ at the time. “And the huge loads of pollution into our waterways and estuaries and coastal environment, if you think you can do something about it then you should.”
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If done well, farmers say the practice has the dual benefit of feeding animals and protecting pastures.
Winter grazing on crops, like swedes and kale, is especially important in the south because colder winters limit pasture growth, leading to a feed deficit.
“Without winter crops, stocking rates need to be significantly reduced,” says Mark Patterson, the former NZ First MP who’s now the Otago president of Federated Farmers.
Conservation group Forest & Bird, however, says intensive winter grazing is generally never good for the environment. “There is always a significant risk of contaminants to groundwater, and runoff of contaminants and sediment to rivers and streams,” says Canterbury manager Nicky Snoyink.
Robson’s campaign, in 2018 and 2019, caused a public outcry about animal welfare. In August 2019, the Government established a winter grazing taskforce. Robson was a member.
As recommended by the taskforce, a winter grazing action group was established to provide information and guidance.
Running in parallel was a regulatory overhaul, dubbed essential freshwater, which involved something called the freshwater leaders group.
New rules were announced, aimed at controlling “high-risk farm practices” like winter grazing and feedlots, under the national environmental standard for freshwater.
After consultation, the rules were tinkered with, and delayed.
This winter, the rubber hits the road. If farmers don’t meet certain conditions for intensive winter grazing they’ll need to apply for consents.
Newsroom has asked regional councils in Otago, Southland and Canterbury to provide details. The answers have environmentalists worried.
“The stark difference in numbers of applications and the length of time it takes to grant consents across the regions perhaps reflects where all three regions are in terms of freshwater planning. Forest & Bird does have reservations about how consistently the national freshwater regulations are being applied, and maybe the time differences are partly a result of that.
As for Robson, whose campaign started it all, he says: “My impression is that they’re giving them a free pass.”
“Just because those farmers now have consent, doesn’t mean the job is done (and doesn’t mean water quality will improve).”
– Nicky Snoyink
Otago Regional Council has received the most applications, at 171, and granted 147 of them, covering more than 12,300 hectares.
None has been rejected. Five were withdrawn because they met permitted activity standards and consents weren’t required.
The average processing time, between applications being lodged and granted, was five days.
Environment Southland, meanwhile, has received only 24 applications, with 12 granted. Non-notified consents have been processed in 17.8 days, but limited consents took longer, at an average of 52 days, because of a 20-day submission period.
By comparison, Environment Canterbury (ECan) has received 13 applications and granted two. They took an average of three months to be granted.
In Southland and Canterbury, no consent has been denied or withdrawn.
ECan consents planning manager Aurora Grant said two applications were for global consents, covering multiple farms, and one was temporary.
Some applications will result in two consents being issued (although they’ll be reported as one), ECan says, one for land use and other for discharging contaminants. That’s because of “technicalities” in the regulations.
All councils have winter grazing webpages with more information.
Otago Regional Council acting consents manager Alexandra King says if a consent’s needed – because the property hasn’t done it before, or it doesn’t meet permitted criteria – then the information required by the council includes: where and how much land is intensively grazed; and details of how it’ll be managed, including of environment effects.
Grant, of ECan, says farmers are encouraged to have a written management plan to identify environmental risks, and plans to manage and mitigate them.
“We look at the potential adverse effects from the winter grazing activity on ecosystems, freshwater and waterbodies. This includes whether the activity could affect people’s safe use of water, Māori cultural values, and the susceptibility of the land to erosion. We also consider the timing and appropriateness of the methods proposed to avoid, remedy, or mitigate the loss of contaminants to water.”
The low number of applications in Southland is open to interpretation.
Last year, Environment Southland brought in a work-around, giving deemed permitted activity status for farmers who didn’t meet slope criteria but jumped through all other hoops. There’s also a suggestion some Southland farmers were moving to grass-based grazing in winter.
A Southland consent boycott, endorsed by Federated Farmers, was reported last year, over the Ministry for the Environment’s (MfE) failure to set farm plan criteria – which would have given farmers an alternative to a consent.
Grumpy about consents
Mark Patterson, the Otago president of Federated Farmers, says via email farmers are “generally pretty grumpy” about having to apply for consents to graze animals in winter.
(That’s more polite than an email last year written by Federated Farmers’ arable industry group chairman Colin Hurst, who says farmers caught in limbo were “quite frankly pissed off”.)
“Practices have improved dramatically in recent years, as monitored by the Otago Regional Council,” Patterson says. “Grazing compliance should have been covered by a unit within the promised farm environment plans which MfE have failed to deliver in time.”
The regional council has been outstanding, he says, in its communication and support.
“It’s been challenging for them rolling out a new regime to a reluctant audience. Feedback to date, including my own experience, is that the Otago Regional Council have supported us through the process and efficiently turned consents around.”
Forest & Bird is urging councils to thoroughly assess the effects of each consent application, including at a catchment scale, to ensure they don’t lead to further degradation of freshwater.
Monitoring is also critical, Snoyink says.
“Just because those farmers now have consent, doesn’t mean the job is done – and doesn’t mean water quality will improve.
A government report, Our Freshwater 2023, published earlier this month, highlighted worrying trends in our waterways, with the greater intensity and expansion of farming, and urbanisation, listed as the leading causes.
“Intensive winter grazing is synonymous with intensive agriculture,” Snoyink says.
“These rules were created for a reason and councils need to monitor and enforce them carefully if we’re ever going to see an improvement in water quality in regions like Southland. Beyond that, less intensive winter grazing will mean better outcomes for freshwater and our rivers, lakes, and wetlands.”
Angus Robson, the environmentalist from Matamata, says the thing that concerned him the most was a flowchart from the Otago Regional Council stating farmers would need consent if they couldn’t meet rules relating to what are known as critical source areas.
“If you want to stop sediment, pathogens and nutrients overland flow from your winter grazing, especially in a heavier rain event … then you have to protect your critical source areas.”
(Critical source areas are humps, hollows, and depressions where water is known to accumulate. These areas contribute a disproportionately large amount of contaminants into waterways. That’s because, if grazed, the scrum of animals pee and poo there, and churn and compact the ground, creating a slurry of contaminants which can be washed away, especially after rain.)
Already, Robson, and his collaborator Matt Coffey, have sent photos of farms with steep slopes and critical source areas planted with annual forage crops to the Otago, Southland and Canterbury councils.
“We’re saying, here’s these risk areas, which we think are going to fail in a rainfall event,” Robson says, “and we want to know how you’re going to go about the setup, and the warning and surveillance, to make sure that you’re doing your job.”
After four years, much wrangling, and contested regulations, this winter looms as a real test – not just for the grazing practices of farmers, it seems, but for the monitoring regime of councils, as well.
* This story has been corrected to clarify there were parallel work groups regarding animal welfare and freshwater.
